Author: Ella Fosse
Museum Studies Intern at Hillman Archives and Special Collections – Fall 2023
This fall semester, I was given the opportunity to work in Hillman Archives and Special Collections with the Ford E. and Harriet R. Curtis Theatre Collection. During my time, I was able to work closely with the curator of the collection, William Daw. Under his supervision, I was able to work directly with archival materials such as photographs, posters, and even watercolors. I was mainly tasked with three projects: doing preliminary cataloging of a collection of movie posters and pressbooks, researching and cataloging several pieces of art created and donated by costume designer Mark Negin, and utilizing ArchiveSpace software to process a collection of photographs from the Sun Telegraph.
Of the various projects I was tasked with this semester, I spent the most time with the Sun Telegraph photographs. This part of the collection consists of 13 boxes of photographs, which I organized by subject. As this was the theatre archive, the people depicted were Hollywood and Broadway celebrities. Over the course of the internship, I processed over half of the collection, going through L-Z in the alphabet. In this process, I grew familiar with the processing software and how to handle sensitive materials such as photographs, with the added bonus of growing familiar with the culture of celebrity life in the 1920s-1950s. Most photographs had the newspaper clip of the article it appeared in on the back. It seemed like half of the photos I went through were used in articles about actors going to court for their fifth divorce or, in one memorable case, being on trial for murder. It was interesting to see which aspects of celebrity life were promoted by the press to their audiences at the time. The photos were a great mix of celebrity paparazzi photos, stills from movies, and photographs from plays or musicals. I was able to see a lot of photographs of celebrities who are still popular today, such as Marilyn Monroe (once the collection can be requested, I highly suggest checking her folder out!).
Overall, my internship was very fruitful, both in the work I was able to produce and the experience I gained from it. I feel like I developed a great understanding of the archival process and the behind-the-scenes of library work, which is truly valuable both in my path in Museum Studies and as a student of history.
Image: A photograph of Nan Vickers in a photograph from “The Lark” that the Sun Telegraph published in 1960. The photo is complete with markings that indicate what part of the photograph would appear in the news story.